Sony Playstation 3 Preorders Begin to Slow in Europe

If you thought it was a bad time to be a Sony (NYSE: SNE) "fan boy" in the U.S. and/or Japan... well, suffice to say that it's not any better in the rest of the world, either... including Europe.

With only a matter of weeks to go before the Play Station 3 finally arrives in PAL territories after a months-long hiatus, retailers in these regions are beginning to show signs of slowing demand for the PS3 compared to the Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Xbox 360 and Nintendo (Pink Sheets: NTDOY) Wii at similar time points in their rollout schedules.

In fact, Gameworld Network reports that "After the embarrassment of having lots of stock left on the shelves in America, if the early pre-order stakes are anything to go by then the situation is set to be much of the same in Europe as well."

Indeed, the British division of online retailer Amazon.com apparently still has allocations remaining in its queue for pre-ordering the PS3, despite starting the process more than a week ago. By comparison, the Wii sold out of all of its pre-order allocations last year in less than 7 minutes. The year before, allocations of the Xbox 360 went nearly as fast.

Even PS3 pre-orders at Play.com are doing no better. According to the retailer's website, the button to "buy" is scheduled to disappear upon the sale of their entire pre-order allocation - yet the same Gameworld Network report states that "the button is still there and very clickable."

The result: we all have to wonder now what's going on in Europe. There are plenty of questions we must ask ourselves now: Is the PS3 just too darn expensive? Have too many people already spent too much mony on Wii consoles at Christmas? Have the guys over at Sony allocated many more PS3 units to Europe than any of us expected?

Or worse still, do people just not buy into the Sony philosophy any more? Trust me, we'll all find out soon enough. For now, keep an eye on this one: it's going to be a long ride to the end.

The original source for this story can be found at the following URL:

http://www.gwn.com/news/story.php/id/11320/PS3_Pre-Orders_-_Slow_Or_Plentiful_Supply.html